The Rulings of the Night An Ethnography of Nepalese Shaman Oral Texts

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Author:
Gregory G. Maskarinec

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This is a first-rate account of one of the liveliest places of traditional shamanic practice today, Maskarinees study, based on extensive fieldwork in a blacksmith community of Western Nepal, enriches the complex of Dhaulagiri Shamanism by a caste perspective and invites a wider comparison both with other Himalayan and with Siberian forms of ritual healing. Regarding shamans oral expressions, the book comes with a surprise: not only are their mythical chants imbued with meaning, constituting a coherent cosmological system, but their most haphazard utterances, their magical formulas ans mantras-often considered meaningless â€“ also carry distinct semantic messages. From his first contacts in the field to the printed book Maskarinec has passed through contrasting stages of an intellectual path. A peace Corps autodidact in the beginning, he became a faithful recorder and keen calligrapher of shamanic chants; in The Rulings of the Night he emerges as a philosopher of language. In one respect, however, he remained unchanged â€“ in his devotion to ethnographic and linguistic detail. - Michael Oppitz, Volkerkundemuseum, University of Zurich